


Natural Philosophy

by blood bag boogie (evil_bunny_king), evil_bunny_king



Series: The Dancing and the Dreaming [2]
Category: The Wayhaven Chronicles (Interactive Fiction)
Genre: Aka dirty talk Nathaniel Sewell style, Established Relationship, F/M, Library blowjobs, Literary debate & lyrical musings, Nathaniel Henry-LOUISE, Oneshot collection, Porn with Feelings, Sensuality, Sleepy Cuddles, Sleepy Kisses, This got a little dirty in the sweetest of ways, nate loving hours, sweet silly tenderness
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-08-07
Updated: 2020-11-05
Packaged: 2021-03-06 03:41:33
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 5,243
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25756792
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/evil_bunny_king/pseuds/blood%20bag%20boogie, https://archiveofourown.org/users/evil_bunny_king/pseuds/evil_bunny_king
Summary: I will know no other god -no other creature -than the love wild before me(and her sweet mouth)Nate x F!Detective,pure thirst(and feelings!)1 - Weighted2 - Madding, Maddening3 - in his library4 - November 4th
Relationships: Female Detective/Nathaniel "Nate" Sewell
Series: The Dancing and the Dreaming [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2053032
Comments: 58
Kudos: 104





	1. Weighted (M)

**Author's Note:**

> So I've added ratings to the chapter titles as some are spicier, let's say, than others.

They’re on their knees on his bed. Nate’s shirt is discarded on the floor and Dinah’s unbuttoned, slipping from her shoulders as Nate’s mouth finds the curve of her neck and settles there, his kisses warm and almost painfully tender. His arms wrap around her, her hands drawing lines down his bare back as he bites down, the blunt sharpness of still human teeth teasing her skin. And then his tongue sweeps to follow, gently, soothing. She shivers, weightless and weighted all at once.

She’s held together by his arms, she thinks. If he lets go she’d drift away, shake into pieces. She's dizzy and molten, lost in the warmth of his mouth and she burns where they’re pressed together, granting friction - but not close enough.

His hand slips between them, firm in its purpose. It slides over her hip, her thigh, stroking inwards-

She catches his hand around the wrist, holding him back before he can touch her.

He pulls back, his pupils blown dark and hazed with want.

"Dinah," he asks, softly, his gaze searching for her own. “Are you alright? Do you want-”

To _stop_ , he almost says, but she draws him back to her and kisses him before he can, swallowing the words before he can voice them.

He kisses her back, warm and encompassing, patience in the welcome of his mouth.

"No,” she murmurs eventually, easing her grip on him. He draws back and blinks at her, slow and mussed and well-kissed, and she smiles at him, affectionate and helplessly fond. “I want this, Nate.” She smooths her hands down his neck to his shoulders, tracing the glow of the dim light of the bedroom over his warm, brown skin. “I want you.”

Her hands trail lower and then she leans back, as she'd wanted to do before- to see him, the long, lean lines of him bared before her in the slow of the evening.

"I just... wanted to see you," she says, asking, _may I?_

“Of course,” he says, meaning _always._

His hair is fluffed around his face, curling where it catches against his cheeks and he smiles as she brushes it back behind his ear, tucking it there, ineffectively. He leans into her touch.

"I am yours," he says into the quiet, his voice low; a promise. "All that you ask." He turns until he finds the swell of her palm, grazing the flesh of it with his teeth, his gaze on hers. "All that I can give."

It takes her a moment to regather her breath, and a familiar, smirk of a smile curls his soft, full lips (oh how she loves and she hates how easily he undoes her-).

She moves closer, mattress dipping beneath her knees. She leans in, feeling his exhale warm against her cheek as he tilts his head to follow and then she smooths her hands down his arms, lightly, brushing her palms over his warm skin to his wrists, and brings them back to his sides. She presses them there, lightly. A challenge. A request.

His next breath is a laugh, smiling, as she leans back again. She smiles too. And then she starts exploring.

She traces the line of his collarbone from the hollow of his throat. She runs her fingers across the muscle over his ribs, counting the freckles there (six), chasing their curve. He shivers when her touch catches his nipple in its trail across his chest and she returns to it, thumb settling more firmly this time, tilting her head back to look up at him.

He watches her from under his lashes, his breaths slow, his tongue just visible against a glimpse of teeth. She burns under the weight of his gaze.

She likes it when he watches her.

She rubs circles lazily with her thumb and smiles as he takes an unsteady breath, bowing in towards her, his hands gripping the sides of his thighs.

She flattens her palm against his chest, feeling the gentle swell of its rise and fall before she dips closer and licks a broad line up, and up. She blows lightly across it after, until she sees the skin tighten, her fingers moving, dragging and marking, leaving goosebumps in their wake. She smiles again as he sighs, as she sees him swallow. One of his hands rises to tangle in her hair, tight enough for her to feel the pull but not to hold and she hums, low and pleased, heat coiling in the pit of her stomach. She wants- she wants everything he can give her and more.

She rises up on her knees so that she can trail kisses up his bared throat, her fingers reaching around and digging into his shoulder blades to draw him closer and he groans, the hand in her hair loosening to smooth a scorching trail down her back.

“Dinah,” he says, his voice thick and low with lust.

Whatever response she might’ve leveraged is lost and forgotten in the way he says her name.

She rolls into him, her breath hitching where she’s tucked against his neck. He moans. His other arm finally rises, wrapping firmly around her waist as she stutters out a sigh, lip caught between her teeth, chasing friction- and then he’s moving, they’re both moving, Nate pulling them both backwards until he can drag her firmly into his lap.

He settles back against the plush headboard and looks at her, his hands firmly on her hips, his head tilted back and faintly ravished. She tightens the grip of her knees from where she straddles his thighs and laughs at the low rumble of a growl that breaks from him.

He leans forward, once again closing the short space between them and he’s not holding back, now. He presses up against her, nosing closer for a whisper of a kiss before drawing back when she follows and she breathes another laugh, steadying herself on his shoulders.

And then he raises an eyebrow in challenge, grinding slowly, sinfully upwards and effectively robbing her of thought and reason.

“Fair exchange,” he says when she braces a hand against his chest, catching her breath and she grins, slow and broad and silly.

“Fair enough,” she says, and then she pulls him down to sink into his smiling mouth once more.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> tbh not sure whether this actually counts as explicit? But there is going to be a series of these (this is the 2-3 snippet so far...) so better safe than sorry.
> 
> There might be typos/odd word substitutions; I am a little sleep deprived and it's entirely my own fault. But I've been through it several times and wanted to post it!
> 
> I love 1 man and his name is Nathaniel Sewell
> 
> I am on tumblr btw - evilbunnyking.


	2. madding, maddening (M)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "Stay here a little longer," he murmurs, and presses a kiss on the bared slope of her shoulder.
> 
> His mouth is soft and lazily tender, and a different, stirring warmth spreads from the touch, gentle and overwhelming.
> 
> "Stay with me." Another kiss, lingering and sharper, the promise of a mark. "Here."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A gift for the wonderful Mar, who prompted me with 'weak, sweaty kisses because it’s unbearably hot.'

“Nate,” Dinah murmurs, smoothing a hand ineffectively over his back, her fingers catching dully on his sweat damp skin. She shakes his shoulder, gently. "We need to get up."

They're in her apartment, curled together in the stripped-down sheets of her bed, Nate's arm around her waist and one of his long legs tangled with hers. She shifts beneath his weight, wincing at the way they stick to each other in the heat. Nate is sprawled diagonally across the bed and across her and as sleep warm and delicious as he is, in the final flush of summer the room is _already_ sweltering. 

"Nate," she tries again. No answer. She laughs, lightly, the sound shaking through the both of them. "You know, you sleep pretty deeply. For a vampire.”

He _is_ disarming like this, though: his hair is rumpled over his forehead, long enough now to curl over his brow. His mouth is lax and soft as he breathes, and he's tucked so close to her shoulder that she feels his breath drift over her skin.

There are pillow creases across his cheek.

 _However_. Even he would have stirred by this point.

She trails her fingers between his shoulder blades towards the dip of his spine, and then pokes his lower back. "Nate."

She feels his lips curve into a smile and pokes him again and he only nuzzles closer, pressing his nose into the join of her neck with an indulgent sigh.

Nathaniel Henry Sewell is refusing to move. And with all six foot four of him half-draped over her, she's powerless to change that.

Her hand flaps at his back, weakly. “ _Nate_.”

His grip around her tightens and he shifts until he can pull her closer against the radiating heat of him. She grumbles in protest, but it's distinctly half-hearted. God, she could lay here in his arms all day and she _wants to do it_.

"Stay here a little longer," he murmurs, and presses a kiss on the bared slope of her shoulder. It's a compelling argument. His mouth is soft, and lazily tender, and a different, stirring warmth spreads from the touch, gentle and overwhelming. "Stay with me." Another kiss, lingering and sharper, with the promise of a mark. "Here."

She inhales, shifting against him and his hand smooths along her side with a gentle, sure pressure, tracing and retracing a line between her waist and her hip with the pads of his fingers, the trail of his short nails. He passes his lips a final time over the love bite, a light rasp of stubble before tracing her jaw with silvering kisses and oh, he knows, he knows exactly what he’s doing to her.

Her traitorous hands tangle in his hair, dig into his shoulder blade and he hums, content and approving.

She pulls at his hair lightly for that, enough for him to notice. He groans into her neck and then laughs.

She tugs again, gently, and he pushes himself up and onto his elbow, smiling down at her. He’s half-curled over her, the growing out strands of his hair flicked out over his eyes and sticking to his forehead. _She's_ sticking to him - they are sticking to each other, in this heat. He looks at her, his eyes softened by sleep and long-lashed, sweetly downturned at the corners and she wants to kiss him, delightfully infuriating as he is.

She reaches up to run her fingers through the shorter hair at the nape of his neck. His hand remains, weighted at her waist. 

They can't stop touching each other. Tactile, she's thought before.

But they have _obligations_.

"We have a meeting," she manages, and he blinks slowly, in acknowledgement. " _And_ I'm pretty sure we're already going to be late for it. Don't start something you can't finish-”

He raises an eyebrow and leans that little bit closer, his hand shifting slowly up to her ribs, thumb smoothing over her skin and settling beneath her breast. “Oh, darling,” he says, his voice dropping low and oh, she _shivers_. “I would make sure that we finished, together, and in our own time. And we would most _certainly_ be late.”

"I-" she breaks off as he dips and brushes his lips against the corner of her mouth, sweet and soft, curving with his smile. And that is fine, because she wasn’t sure what she would've said, her thoughts soundly splintered apart. 

"Thankfully,” he muses between kisses, his feather light touches moving towards her cheekbone now. “It's been pushed back to the afternoon."

It takes her a moment to remember he’s talking about the _meeting_.

“....why?” she breathes around her exhale as his mouth grazes the curve of her ear, his fingers running through her hair (and there’s a part of her that wants him to wind his grip tighter and pull-)

“A prior arrangement,” is all he says and then he moves, his knee slipping between hers until he can nudge her legs apart and settle between them. He sinks down against her until his stomach is pressed against her hips and they’re eye-to-eye, propping himself up on his elbow so he can follow the roaming touch of his hand. He’s so deliciously, agonisingly _warm_.

She weakly flaps her hand at his shoulder again. “It’s _hot_ , Nate.”

“Mmm.” His hand has fallen to her hip, teasing at the edge of her underwear. He catches her eye. “Do you want me to stop, _love?_ ”

“...No,” she says and he grins and leans in to kiss the word from her mouth. His hand sweeps upwards, blazing and heated as he palms her breast and rolls his thumb over her nipple and she clutches at his shoulders, the tacky skin, arching and breathlessly cursing him.

 _"We looked like gods with feet of fire,_ " he laughs into her ear, unrepentant; she shivers helplessly, like putty in his hands when he speaks to her like that _. "We looked like lovers blazing for each other."_

 _“Oh_ ,” is all she manages and he pulls her closer, hand retreating to tug her leg around his hip, fingers splaying over her thigh and inching higher, intent. 

He murmurs into her ear. “Are you blazing for me, love? _”_

\--

Eventually, after they’ve lost track of time in lazy movement and the grip of his hands and simmering, unbearable heat - eventually, she remembers herself.

"Why did the meeting move?"

He stirs where he’s curled around her in the kicked off sheets. He looks up at her with a half-lidded gaze and a twist to his mouth that could almost be... sheepish?

She raises her eyebrows. The sheepish smile grows, lopsided, and she presses her thumb against the edge of it, so helplessly fond.

He closes his eyes and leans into the touch. “I believe I mentioned,” he murmurs. His eyelashes flutter, tellingly. “It clashed with prior arrangements.”

She hums, unconvinced. "But _what_ prior arrangements?"

He smiles again and turns into her palm. “...the ones I concocted yesterday afternoon.”

“ _Agent Sewell_ …!”

He grins and nips playfully at the flesh of her thumb. “I cannot say that I won't do it again.”

And she grins too, even as she can already picture the reception a certain two other members of Unit Bravo would be preparing for them later, and simply laughs.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Quote is from Jeanette Winterson's 'The Power Book' (it's one of my faves)
> 
> Yes, I am posting this before the October prompt month - I really doubt I'll be participating, though, I have waaay too many wips and stuff on - but if I can, I will try. Free-write exercise, right??


	3. in his library (E)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> She's crowded him into a nook in his own library - in the middle of the day, no less.

It’d started as a discussion. A difference of opinion over the validity of a book to be included in his library, a book Dinah had bought him that he’d found her slipping into his _Paris, non-determinate_ , bookcase.

“It’s _provoking,_ ” she’d argued (indefensibly) through her grin. “It’s a _first edition_. You have _Madame Bovary_ on this shelf; there’s a thematic connection in the self-destruction of a young woman frustrated by modern, masculine life-”

 _“That_ is actual literature.”

“As is this-” he’d snorted at that, shoulder leant against the bookcase, turned towards a dimmer corner of the library - “my my, Agent Sewell, are you a literary snob?”

“The book, as you’ve told me, is about fetishising a _Bear_ , I hardly think that counts- _”_

 _“_ Bestiality, actually- _”_ (the noise he’d made had her grin increasing) “it’s won awards, you know.”

_“How-?”_

There had been a less than elegant, physical… negotiation over the book. He’d moved to remove it and she’d stepped in beside him, faintly pouting (and betrayed by her smile).

And when he’d shifted, angling himself so that he was between her and the bookshelf, she’d copied the action, raising an eyebrow and waiting him out.

“If you would like,” he’d tried, smiling at her. One of his slow, deliberate smiles, the low dip to his voice. “I could recommend some better material. I could read it to you.” He’s wanted to - he’s thought of poems, vignettes, songs he’s wanted to share with her; he’s been collecting them for a while.

She’d blinked back, her smile just as deliberate, engaging (the thrill that gives him).

 _“_ What if I said I wanted to read to you?”

\--

His back against the bookshelves, she does exactly that.

She whispers sweet nothings to him, presses the words close and dark and warm against his ear - her hands, her hands wandering and grazing, promising but only briefly, so lightly, settling enough to touch. She's crowded him into a nook in his own library - in the middle of the day, no less. 

His breath caught in his throat, his pulse in his ears- _Dinah-_

She leans closer, her hands at his waist, the press of her fingertips burning through the thin fabric of his shirt. Her fingers trace downwards, seeking the hem; she trails sparking, shimmering lines of liquid feeling behind her, setting his skin alight. "I want you," she tells him (and he could consume her, there). "I want you to enjoy me, to enjoy this. I want the taste of you in my mouth. In my skin. I want to slip into you and you into me and for us to drink each other, learn each other - Nate, there's so much I want to know."

His heart is in his mouth, overfull, _aching-_

She holds him there and he lets her, his grip curling knuckle-white on the shelf behind him. 

"I want to know how to bring you close," she whispers into the shell of his ear, tipped forward onto her toes, and he shudders. "What you like. What I can do to you. I want to draw you under, see you and feel you, within and without."

Her hands are at the ends of his shirt. “Do you want me to stop, Nate.”

 _"No,"_ he whispers, his voice rasped and she smiles so beautifully at him when she draws back, eyes damson dark as she slips a hand beneath his shirt.

He gasps at the warmth of her touch as she drags her nails across his stomach, tilting herself up onto the balls of her feet to chase his mouth. Her kiss is deceptively light, sweet. Oh, she will be his _undoing_. Her other hand grips his hip, holding on for balance as she presses up against him until they are flush together, warm and soft and delectable and the bookshelves are digging into his back and they are still in the _library_ but-

He loses himself, willingly: the drag of her fingers, the press of her palm over his racing heart, blazing, latent heat, and he releases the shelf to run his hands up her sides, smoothing up the line of her ribs, grazing the swell of her breast. He tangles one of his hands in her hair and bends to kiss her, groaning as her hands descend again.

She nudges his nose with hers and pulls just out of reach, his breaths short against her smiling mouth.

“What do you want, Nate?” she murmurs.

His response is breathless and honest. "You. Always you." 

She hums her approval and presses upwards to run her tongue across his lower lip, to catch it between her teeth, suck and let go. She doesn't let him kiss her back, dropping back onto her heels, but she does lean into his palm as he moves his hand to her cheek. He traces her jaw with his fingertips, a line he'd paint if only he had the skill and she softens under his touch, pliant strength and warm, affectionate _challenge_.

"What else?" she asks.

She blinks up at him from under her lashes, holding his eye as she turns her head until she can brush her mouth over his thumb, her lips parting- and he groans as she flicks out her tongue, at the hint of teeth, her mouth warm and soft and delectably inviting. He drags his thumb over her lower lip until it pulls free. He wants - he _wants_.

She removes her hand from his shirt and raises it to his cheek in turn, brushing his cheekbone gently, tenderly. He feels the touch as an _ache_. Her fingers fall to the curve of his neck, touch firming possessively, and he is already hers but he'd give her anything, everything, if only she'd ask.

"Dinah," he starts. Her hand slides down, nails grazing across his chest, rumpling his shirt and he sighs, curving into her, his grip tightening where his hands have fallen to her waist. Her thumb rubs circles against the bare skin of his hip, where the hem has ridden up.

"I know what I want, Nate," she breathes against his mouth.

And then she sinks to her knees.

She places one hand against his hip, pressing him gently but firmly against the bookcase. _Stay put_ , is the unspoken request. 

Her other hand falls to his belt.

Nate's head falls back against the shelf with a thunk, knocking the books stacked there against the backboard. He swears quietly in a language that hasn't been spoken aloud in centuries.

Dinah laughs, fluid, electric, as she finishes unbuckling his belt and starts to pull it free. She leans back onto her heels to grin up at him as she tugs it from his final belt loop. She's smiling and beautiful, so impossibly beautiful.

"You'll have to tell me what that means, at some point," she says, dropping his belt with a lewd clink onto the wooden floor beside them.

His hand finds the curve of her head again, smoothing her hair back away from her eyes, to see her properly, and she leans into it, her eyelids fluttering closed for a moment, a smile playing on her lips. Her pulse flutters almost as much as his does, pressing like a beating wing in her chest, at the thin skin of her neck, but her hands are steady as she smooths them up his thighs, touch dulled by the thick, rough fabric of his jeans.

He’s never hated denim as much as does now. Utilitarian, formless-

But then she thumbs the hot, hard press of his arousal through the jeans and he loses the thought, a groan wrenching itself from his throat.

His other hand has fallen back to the lower shelf behind him now that she is out of reach, reaching for purchase. He holds on tight, arching back against the shelf and the wood creaks in his grip.

The bookcase itself shakes. By the gods, if he’s not careful he’ll take the library down around them.

The reminder sobers him, a moment. He regathers himself and curls forward to look at her, gently tugging her head up to meet his gaze. And oh, she goes so willingly-

“Dinah- darling, we should-”

“Do you want me to stop?” she asks. She looks up at him once more: eyes so dark they could be black in the light, pupils blown with desire. She wets her lips, her hands moved to the neutral zone of the sides of his thighs. He misses the touch like a brand-

“No,” he breathes.

Her warm fingers return, smoothing up his inner thighs and he runs his fingers in her hair again, simmering, anticipating. Her breaths are coming faster now, as heavy as his own, rich with desire and promise and a hand wraps around his hip again, pressing him against the bookcase.

He will guard against the sounds he'll make, he decides, abandoning his play of resistance. The library is _his,_ is _theirs_ , for all that it is a resource he shares; while he doesn't want them to get caught the likelihood that anyone would come here at this hour- that he wouldn’t _hear them coming-_

She palms him through his jeans, leaning forward to press an open mouthed kiss against him through the heavy fabric and he bites off a moan, his hips twitching forward, the bookcase shuddering again with him. _Fenedhis_.

"I want to hear you, Nate," she says, almost drunkenly, her touch blazing trails where it settles. “Please. I want to have you here," she says. "I want your hand in my hair, holding me. The taste of you. The weight of you in my mouth, on my tongue-" She bites at his hip where his shirt has rode up before she sways back to look at him again, as he thrusts against her grip on his hip and her hand on him “And I want to _hear you enjoy me_."

He tips his head back with a thunk, with a groan, overcome and holding himself back from- from guiding her sweet mouth where he wants her, where he needs her. From ripping away the layers between them. He's heavy and electric and smouldering.

"Anything," he says, the words like honey in his mouth. "Everything."

She hums in approval, appreciation, and her fingers are unbuttoning his jeans, pulling down the fly. "I will sing for you, love," he says on a gasp as her hand finds him again, warm and perfect, "Your name; the only name I know."

"Yes," she breathes, leaning in - her words against the heat of him, his jeans and his briefs pulled down from his hips- if anyone was to enter, now, if they were to see- " _Tell me._ "

His grip tightens in her hair and then he gentles it, but she moans at the pull, drunken, half-gone in lust. She presses in and nuzzles the hair leading down, drinking him in, pressing a kiss to the vee of his hips as her hand firms around him and strokes and by the gods - he's going to burst into flame, he's going to burn.

 _"_ I want to bear the mark of you," he manages, and hisses and then groans as she draws a love bite against his inner thigh, quick and sharp and lovely- "I want- your honeyed words- your honeyed mouth-"

She runs her lips down his length, warm and dragging, as her hand sweeps behind it in a continued stroke and his knees threaten to buckle- he's leaning fully back against the shelf, so glad they've picked the bookcase braced against the wall. She presses her cheek against him, her lips fallen open, looking up at him with half-lidded eyes and listening, _listening_ -

 _"_ I will know no other god, _"_ he groans out, _"_ no other creature than the love wild before me, and her sweet mouth."

She takes him then, ardently, sloppily, hands and tongue and the wanton heat, the loving dedication of her mouth, and he's not sure of the words, the languages he speaks. Movement - her flushed cheeks, the curl of her hair, the way she swallows around him- the shelves shiver and something falls, maybe; the entire library could be collapsing and he'd still-

 _“the feeling”_ a gasp, a moan- _“-of you, of us-”_ delicious, curling heat, _“the taste-”_

That electric spark shivers through him, tightening, and he bends, curving around her.

“Dinah-” he pants, “Dinah, I-”

She moans around him and her hand- she wants to touch herself, with the hand not braced against his hip, thighs pressed together, he can taste her arousal- and he stops himself from rutting into her mouth, his fingers knotted in her hair.

He’s close; he feels the blinding, burning tightness of it. He tugs on her hair, in warning. “ _Joonam-_ ”

Her hand around him twists - heat and the certainty-

He comes apart with her name in his mouth, his head thrown back amongst the books.

 _“Dinah,”_ he moans, a long, low sound, his heartbeat pounding in his chest and in his ears. His knees would almost give way, save for his grip on the bookshelf - and she draws him through it, groaning her satisfaction, lips and tongue and chasing heat-

The jerk of his hips, the spiralling surrender- sensitivity - and then his grip in her hair pulls, coaxing her away.

She releases him with an obscene pop and pants against him, swayed drunkenly into his knees. He curls around her, smoothing her hair back, behind her ears, with both hands, and then he moves to cup her cheeks between his palms and he sinks to his knees before her.

The taste of him - of her- is intoxicating in the slow pressure of her open mouthed kiss.

He groans and sinks into her, undone and a mess.

“Dinah,” he pants, eventually, forehead pressed to hers, and his jeans are still pulled uncomfortably around his thighs but he doesn’t - he doesn’t care.

“Nate,” she whispers, voice rasped from the effort but deep and content, _satisfied_ and he licks his name from her mouth.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Nate isn't quoting this time, he's riffing vaguely off of Keats and the romantics 'honey wild'.
> 
> I haven't decided whether he's said all of this in a language that Dinah can understand - italics is definitely another language, undefined~
> 
> There will be a part 2 at some point - Nate, returning the favour. 
> 
> I did throw that elvhen curse in there haha.


	4. November 4th (T)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Happy birthday, Agent Sewell.

Dinah is curled on top of the sheets in the warm, dark shadows of Nate’s bed when she hears his gentle knock on the door - little more than a tap of his knuckles, and the pause as he waits for a response. That amuses her, a little. This is his own room, after all.

And he knows that she’s here. He’d asked her to stay, pressed her back into the pillows that morning and drew promises from her like silk with his slow, drugging kisses.

She hums under her breath, just lightly, to acknowledge his presence. The door opens and then closes, shutting behind him with a click.

Nate steps across the room, gilded by the lamplight as he draws to a halt before the bed and takes in: her bare feet, her calves, the warm curves of her thighs beneath the low hem of the soft undershirt she’d stolen from one of his drawers. The way the fabric settles, so light and loose over her shoulders; the way that she’s looking at him, weighted, waiting. His gaze is molten, dark.

“Good evening, Dinah,” he says, his voice low. His words settle over her like a breath, like the stir of the woods beyond the ring fence of the warehouse. And then, “you stayed.”

There’s that smile that he gives her, somewhat crooked. Something slow and deliberate (she simmers beneath it, in the warmth of his room, goose pimples shivering down the bare skin of her arms and her legs); something disarmed; something she doesn’t know if she has the words for and she’s not sure that he does, either. Soft. Unravelling.

Of course, she should laugh, but she doesn't.

She pulls her legs from beneath her and slides them from the bed, settling her bare feet into the thick, expensive rug he’s rolled across his floor. She steps across the short distance between them, feeling the focus of his gaze as the thin, sinfully soft fabric of his undershirt pulls at her hips, rides up, and she stops before him, tipping her head back to meet his eye. She feels the weight of her loose curls tumble down her back.

"I did," she says, more quietly than she meant to. And then, reaching up to graze his cheek - he leans into the touch and his skin is bloodwarm, his breath soft against her wrist - "I missed you."

She’s tipped herself forward onto the balls of her feet and his hands curl around her waist to steady her, grounding her or setting her alight with the broad warmth of his palms, the firm lines of his fingers. She presses her thumb to the corner of his still smiling mouth and he looks at her, lips parting against her touch. 

"I missed you," she says again, that quiet, insistent truth.

He would speak, she thinks. He has his pretty words, those subtle skeins of thought that he unspools and entangles her within (she draws her thumb over his lower lip, dragging until it tugs free)- 

He kisses her, instead, his hands tightening around her and pulling her close.

It’s less than deliberate, less than controlled and she thinks she tastes the echo of that smile.

His hand moves from her waist, sliding to her back. It scours a path up until he tangles it in her hair and their gasped breaths are warm against her lips, shared.

When he takes a step forward, she yields. Another and then another, until the back of her knees hit the mattress, and then his hands are smoothing down her back again, lower, finding that soft, worn hem at her thighs.

" _Jeegaretō bokhoram_ ," he says finally, drawing back only far enough from her to say it. She feels more than she hears the words. She tastes the crooked way he smiles around them. " _Do you know that? Azizam._ "

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hope this works as well :) it's not really that spicy - the difference between this collection and '[the dancing and the dreaming](https://archiveofourown.org/works/25192516/chapters/61056040)' is nebulous, haha, but it fits with dreamy sleepy Sewell and all of those _promises_ of his.

**Author's Note:**

> I realise I now have 4 separate N Sewell oneshot collections...  
> 1\. Fun, romantic shorts ([For the Dancing and the Dreaming](https://archiveofourown.org/works/25192516/chapters/61056040))  
> 2\. _spicy_ shorts ([Natural Philosophy)](https://archiveofourown.org/works/25756792/chapters/62551120)  
> 3\. love letters ([Vanilla, Bergamot](https://archiveofourown.org/works/25981189/chapters/63163873))  
> 4\. Historical/time travel shorts, Poly!AU with Ava/Dinah/Nate, spanning 300 years ([deltangam](https://archiveofourown.org/works/27542269/chapters/67359454))


End file.
